Collinwood, Late Summer 1971 

Barnabas absently maneuvered the car along the winding roads that led to Collinsport. His mind did not register the subtle signs that summer was beginning to lose its hold on Maine. Many of the trees were clothed in leaves that were exchanging their fading shades of green for vibrant crimsons, golds and rusts, but all Barnabas Collins could see was Julia’s face, cold and impassive, as she told him to go home. All he could hear was the steely resolve of her voice as she told him that his love for her was his misfortune.

Beneath that voice, however, he also could still hear the sound of a woman crying. No, it was more than crying; this woman had been sobbing in despair. What he was unsure of was the identity of the woman whose sobs lingered in his mind.

Had he really heard the crying at all? If he had, had it been Julia who had sounded so forlorn or had it been a stranger? He could be certain of nothing. He had been exhausted and ill at the time. A hotel employee had found him outside of Julia’s room and had helped him back to his own room. After a curt call to Willie, he had found himself on the red-eye to Boston where his handyman had been waiting to whisk him back to the Old House and to the bitter loneliness that awaited him there.

Had it been Julia whom he had heard? He held on to the hope that it had been for perhaps that meant that she did still love him. Perhaps there still was a time and place for them. But he did not even know where she was. He had been home for several days and had heard nothing from or of her. She could have returned to Maine and gone directly to Wyndcliffe without having contacted any of the family. Or she could still be in San Francisco….

She could still be in San Francisco making arrangements to take the job that had been offered to her.

That thought made his stomach clench into its familiar sickening knot. What if Julia never returned to Collinwood at all? He could imagine her arranging to have her belongings packed and sent to her so that she did not have to set foot on Collins’ property ever again. But surely she wouldn’t do that to the family, to Elizabeth, - to him…

“Cousin Barnabas, can I turn on the radio?” David asked in an effort to alleviate his boredom. He had wrangled a ride with his cousin who was driving into town to purchase supplies for his first semester at the university. Barnabas hadn’t said one word to him since they had gotten into the car, and he didn’t answer David’s question. In fact, he acted as if he didn’t even know that David was in the car with him at all.

The young man knew that something had happened between Barnabas and Julia although he wasn’t sure of the details. He wondered to himself why grown-ups were so stupid. Why didn’t Barnabas and Julia just admit that they were in love and get married already?

“Cousin Barnabas?” he began again with a sigh.

“Hmmm…what is it, David?”

“Is it okay if I turn on the radio?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

David leaned forward and anxiously switched on the dial.

“Hey, hey, hey, you’re groovin’ with Wolfman Jack,” a scratchy voice boomed out at them.

Barnabas started. “What did he just say?”

“He said he was Wolfman Jack,” the boy answered, perplexed by his cousin’s reaction.

“But…why would someone…what kind of a name…” the older gentleman sputtered, sounding alarmed.

“It’s just his nickname, Cousin Barnabas,” David patiently explained. Grown-ups really were stupid. “Wolfman Jack has kind of long hair and a beard. He looks sort of like a werewolf, you know? It’s a joke.”

“Oh.” Barnabas thought that it was a ridiculous nickname as well as a horrible joke. Why would a perfectly normal human being want to adopt that persona? He wondered if Quentin had ever heard of this person.

“Aw, man, not this song,” David moaned as a woman began to sing what sounded like a ballad to Barnabas.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, it’s the stupid Supremes. My friend, Dominic, loves them, but they really bug me.” He reached out to change the station when his cousin abruptly stopped him.

“I want to hear this song, David.”

The boy settled back with a soft groan as Barnabas listened to Diana Ross plaintively sing her lament:

“Love is here and
Oh, my darling, now you're gone
Love is here and
Oh, my darling, now, now you're gone

You close the door to your heart
And you turned the key, locked your love away from me

Love is here and
Oh, my darling, now you're gone

You made me love you
And oh, my darling, now you're gone
You said loving you
Would make life beautiful
With each passing day
But as soon as love
Came into my heart
You turned and you walked, just walked away

You made me love you
Oh, my darling
Now you're gone
You made me love you
Oh, my darling
Now you're gone”

(Song by Brian Holland/Lamont Dozier/Edward Holland, Jr.)

The words to the song struck a painful chord in Barnabas’ heart. He had finally come to realize his love for Julia, but no sooner had he done so than she had closed off her love for him. He felt a tightness in the back of his throat that ached when he tried to swallow it down. Love was here, but now Julia was gone-

“Barnabas!” David’s cry startled him out of his melancholy thoughts. “You’re passing Hickok and Robert’s!” Hickok and Robert’s was the five-and-ten where David wanted to buy some records, presumably none by The Supremes.

Collins hastily stepped on the brake and squealed to a stop causing several Collinsport denizens to stop and stare at him. “Geez, Cousin Barnabas, talk about laying a patch! Sometimes it seems like you just learned how to drive!” David complained.

“David-” his cousin growled, but before he could castigate the boy, the car door had opened, and the young Collins’ heir had hopped out.

“Okay, I’ll meet you back here in forty five minutes. Thanks!” David called out as he hastily shut the door. “But I’d be safer walking home,” he muttered under his breath as he pushed opened the store’s heavy glass door and watched his elder cousin drive away.




Less than the allotted forty-five minutes later, Barnabas Collins sat in his car waiting for David to reappear with his purchases. His trip to the bookstore and the stationery store had taken far less time than he had anticipated.

The silence in the car became deafening as his mind returned again and again to Julia. He had no idea what he should do next. He was unwilling to give up on her although it seemed that she had already given up on him. It was tempting to revert to old behaviors, to hide in the Old House and wallow in his grief, but after a day to think about it, he had refused to give in to his impulses. He resolved to move on with his new career choice although he wondered how in the world he was going to concentrate on his studies. All he wanted to do was to think about how to convince Julia that he was indeed sincere in his feelings for her. Surely, all was not lost. Surely, he could think of a way to win her back….

Drumming his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel, he checked his watch noting that David was now several minutes late. Turning on the radio which was still tuned to his young cousin’s station, he heard the now familiar voice of a man who called himself the Wolfman.

“Listen up, cats. This one is by the coolest of the cool, my old pal, Bobby Sherman!”

Collins listened in astonishment as a young, upbeat voice belted out these words:

“Being alone at night makes me sad, girl 
Yeah, it brings me down all right 
Tossing and turning and freezing and burning 
And crying all through the night
Whoa-oh Julie, Julie, Julie, do you love me?
Julie, Julie, Julie, do you care? 
Julie, Julie, are you thinking of me? 
Julie, Julie, will you still be there?
We had so much fun together 
I was sure that you were mine …” 
(Lyrics: Tom Bahler)

Barnabas ran a weary hand over his face. ‘Julie, do you love me?’ Why did every disc jockey seem bound and determined to rub salt in his already tender wounds? He vowed to himself that upon arriving home, he would have Willie remove the offending radio from his car.

*~*~* *~*~*

Willie Loomis dropped his dust cloth in the drawing room as he heard the front door slam and walked toward the sound.

“Barnabas, how’d you get back so fa-”

“Where is he, Willie?” she demanded.

“Julia! What’re you doin’ here? I mean, where have ya been? We hadn’t heard a word and-”

“Where is he, Willie? I want to talk to him right now.”

For a slender woman, she could certainly stomp into a room, Willie thought to himself. “He ain’t here, Julia. He went into town to buy some stuff he needs for his classes.”

“When will he be back?”

“Uh, I dunno, pretty soon, I guess. What’s goin’ on, Julia?”

The red-haired doctor glared at him for a moment before turning toward the fireplace. Willie had known her for a long time now through some pretty difficult situations, and the young handyman could read her better than she thought he could. She was angry, of that he was certain. But there was much more going on inside of Julia Hoffman. She was confused and rather unsure of herself, and she was using her anger to camouflage these other, weaker emotions. Well, he’d been working on Barnabas for months; now was his chance to work on the other half of this stubborn duo.

She turned back to him and characteristically slapped her open palms against her sides. “Do you know what he did, Willie? He followed me to San Francisco. He gave me some cock and bull story about ‘caring’ for me and wanting me to come home. Here I make my first independent move in four years, and he has to try to sabotage me!”

“It wasn’t no cock and bull, Julia. Barnabas really meant what he said to you.”

“Oh come on, Willie! He just doesn’t want me to go away and leave him. He wants me to stay here at his feet like some pathetic puppy dog waiting for his scraps of attention.”

“That ain’t true,” he said, moving closer to her. He could see that she was trembling a little bit. She definitely was not as sure of herself as she pretended to be. “He meant every word.”

She drew a deep breath, and despite what she might say, he knew he had her attention. “The things he said…Willie, it just isn’t possible.” She began to roam around the room, absently picking up and
examining objects she had seen a million times before. “I’ve waited so long for him to change…to see…. It just isn’t possible,” she repeated, slamming down a brass paperweight in the shape of a fleur-de-lis.

“Julia, do you have any idea what it took for him to get on a plane? Sure, since he’s been in this century, he’s traveled a lot - through parallel time rooms and with the I Ching – but it’s always been
to Collinsport in some time or other. His going to California, hell, I don’t know if he had even heard of what might be out that way when he first lived, and on an airplane no less – that should tell ya somethin’, Julia. Not to mention that he was scared silly over this Dr. Stephens’ guy,” he paused, and they both shared a ghost of a smile. “You can see all this, right, Julia?”

She obstinately shook her head and sank heavily into one of the wingback chairs. She was tired, exhausted, in fact. It wasn’t as easy to jet across the country as it used to be, and she inwardly mused that she must indeed be feeling her age.

“Oh, Willie, I don’t know what to think anymore. The only other time he ever said those kind of things to me, well… he was planning to kill me.” She raised tearful eyes to look into Willie’s sympathetic face. “How can I possibly believe what he is saying to me now?”

She was proving to be a harder nut to crack than he had thought she would be, but Loomis could hardly blame her for continuing to be skeptical. He knew what she had been through with his employer. He knew what she had done for him and what she had received in return. But he was going to have to make her face why she was really in this house at this moment. Why she was here instead of off somewhere else starting a new life.

He steepled his fingers and contemplated them for a moment, looking very much like the man he had served for the last few years. “Julia, I understand how ya feel, believe me, I do. There’ve been plenty of times that Barnabas treated ya badly, and plenty more times when he sure as hell coulda treated ya better. It makes sense that ya finally went and tried to change your life. It even makes sense that it made ya mad that he followed ya to San Francisco to try to stop ya. But doncha see, what don’t make sense, what don’t fit in with all of that, is why you are back here now.”

She stared at him for a moment before biting her lip and looking away.

“Julia, why did ya come back here?” he asked quietly.

To his surprise, she catapulted herself out of the chair and turned her back to him. “I came back because…because I was so damn angry! How dare he interfere in my life! He has no right, he has no say over what I do.” She turned back to face him, and he could see that she had been pulling nervously at the fingers of her taupe gloves. They were now half-on, half-off her hands. “I came back to tell him to go to hell.”

Willie placed his hands on his hips and cocked his head. He wasn’t going to let her believe her own cock and bull story. “Oh, come on, Julia, it sounds like that’s just what ya did when he came to see you in San Francisco. He was pretty devastated when he came home, ya know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so bad. You came all the way back here just to tell him off again? Couldn’t you have called him or written him a nasty letter?”

Julia threw up her hands and one of her gloves went flying across the room. “What do you want me to admit, Willie? That I am still in love with him?” she yelled.

Willie Loomis wanted to laugh out loud. He wanted to grab Julia and swing her around the room. She had no way of knowing that he had forced her to say almost the exact words that he had forced Barnabas to say about her in this very spot not so very long ago.

“Seems to me ya just did, Julia.”

“Oh, Willie, don’t you see? What difference does it make whether I feel the same as I always have? The point is that I don’t trust the way he is feeling. I don’t trust that this isn’t just another one of his tricks.” A tear escaped one of her brilliant eyes, and she savagely wiped it away.

The young man silently walked over to where her glove had landed and picked it up. He went to her, took her hand and closed it over the glove. “I’ll tell ya how ya can trust him, Julia. See this glove? You musta left it behind somewhere, and he found it. He don’t know it, but I saw him with that glove. He was holdin’ it before he left for California, holdin’ it and strokin’ it like you was still wearin’ it. And then I saw him stuff it in one of his pockets, and while we was waitin’ for his plane, he kept reachin’ in there like he was touchin’ it – for strength or somethin’, I dunno. He was plenty nervous about flyin’, and holdin’ your glove seemed to calm him down.”

Julia looked down at her closed hand. It was a warm day; she didn’t even know why she had put the silly things on. She had done so without really thinking about it. Somehow, it had made her feel better, stronger.

“Julia, he carried that glove three thousand miles to give it back to you.”

A look of understanding gradually dawned on Julia’s face. She rubbed the soft fabric between her fingers as that night in her hotel room came back to her. She vividly remembered how Barnabas had held her glove before he had returned it to her. His tortured words played again in her ear: I found this after you left. I brought it here to …reunite it with its…mate.

Until that moment, she had not believed anything he had said to her. But after he had left, after she had picked up her glove, she had been filled with doubts. And if she were to be honest with herself, that was why she had had to come back here.

“You do understand what I’m sayin’ to you, right?” Willie prompted when she remained silent.

“Yes, I understand…Jiminy,” she said slowly. The ghost of a smile was back.

He colored a bit. “He told you about that, huh?”

She stepped over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, Willie, he did. Thank you for what you’ve done for him, Willie. For what you’ve tried to do for us,” she added almost shyly.

Again he wanted to whoop his delight – Julia was finally coming around! “Whatcha gonna do now, Julia?” he asked, forcing himself to remain calm.

“I don’t know, Willie. I believe you. I believe him. But I’m not sure I can…do this right now,” she said softly. “I have a lot of thinking to do. This is going to take some time for me to get used to.

“I need to-”

Before she could finish her thought, the front door to the Old House opened once again.

Part Fourteen